If anyone wonders where the Guelph Mercury stands in this election just look at its pick-up reprint of the phony one-sided story carried in the Toronto Star written by a futurist consultant carrying academic credentials.

A reporter he isn’t. In his glowing non-description of our city that does not exist, Don Tapscott never introduced any counterpoints in his essay. It is apparent that he never visited Guelph or spoke with the citizens. He never questioned any of the material provided by the Farbridge team. The mayor initiated this piece as Tapscott has acknowledged.

This distortion of the facts does a monumental disservice to the people of Guelph who have just experienced a mayor who is out of control, petulant and in danger of losing her job.

There was a total absence of fact checking, especially in the middle of an intense election campaign.

More important is that the Mercury ran this pie-in-the-sky drivel without as much as changing a comma. How can readers trust a newspaper that is so blatant about its support for an administration that is in disarray over its loss of the people’s trust?

The pro-administration coverage extends throughout the paper’s shrinking news hole and on the editorial pages where letters supporting the Farbridge administration run almost two to one. It is a paper that allows most of the columns to be written by pro-Farbridge acolytes members of the so-called community editorial board, even during the campaign. The lone independent city columnist is David Kendrick who raises balanced legitimate points.

The Mercury is a paper that has lost touch with the community and more importantly, fails to cover the people or events that are bringing change to the way Guelph is being managed.

This inaccurate academic paper that slyly slid into the Toronto Star and now picked up by the Mercury, is unworthy of real journalism but perhaps worthy of the attention of the Ontario Press Council.

If the editors failed to grasp that this story was a set up by the Farbridge campaign then maybe they should look for a new line of work.

Dobber: Guess you haven’t been following guelphspeaks.ca for the past three years. There are 550 posts in the archives that spell out the truth about a city council dominated by Farbridge and her cohorts. There are 15 million reasons why none of them deserve election in view of their sleazy attempts to discredit any opposition. The capper came last Thursday with the attempt to tie mayoralty candidate Cam Guthrie with convicted robocall conspirator Michael Sona. Farbridge had to own up to say it was her campaign that placed the anonymous character assassination ad in the Guelph Tribune. And you want this lady to be re-elected along with her fellow travelers on council?